CBD Has No Effect on Driving Ability, Study Finds

CBD has no impact on a person’s ability to drive, even at a dose of 1,500 milligrams (mg), according to a new study.

Published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, the study involved 17 participants who completed a driving simulation after consuming 15, 300, or 1,500 mg of CBD oil (or a placebo).

None of the CBD doses seemed to affect the participants’ driving scores.

CB-Drive my car

To get their findings, the researchers from the University of Sydney’s Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics gave the three doses of CBD to participants.

The participants then completed a driving simulation 45 minutes later and another simulation 3-4 hours later. These simulations required the subjects to “drive” behind another “car” at a safe distance and follow speed limits.

All participants completed the tests four times, each time after taking a different dose of CBD or a placebo.

After analyzing the subjects’ performances (using data from the simulator), the researchers concluded that none of the doses of CBD appeared to affect the participants’ driving abilities.

“The results of this study suggest that acute, oral CBD treatment at doses up to 1500 mg does not induce feelings of intoxication and is unlikely to impair cognitive function or driving performance,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

“However, further research is required to confirm no effect of CBD on safety-sensitive tasks in the hours immediately post-treatment and with chronic administration.”

CBD and driving

The new Lambert study isn’t the first time CBD’s effects on driving ability have been tested. Some of the same researchers behind the study also co-wrote a paper published in 2020 that found that CBD-dominant cannabis, when vaped, doesn’t appear to affect driving ability either.

That study asked participants to vape cannabis that was either THC dominant, CBD dominant, or a mixture of the two. The participants then completed an on-road driving test for an hour under the observation of a driving instructor. The drivers did become more impaired after vaping the THC-dominant cannabis as well as the cannabis that contained equal amounts of THC and CBD. However, the CBD-dominant vape product didn’t appear to impair driving at all.